ACT Heritage Library Manuscript Collection

HMSS 0070 Robert Main Wardrop Cunningham Papers

Scope and Contents Notes

Robert Main Wadrop Cunningham, a pharmacist, became the assistant director-general of the Pharmaceutical Services Branch of the Department of Health.

Cunningham was born in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1910. At some point prior to WWII, the family migrated to Western Australia where they lived in Leederville in Perth. Cunningham was the organist and choirmaster of St Andrew's Presbyerian Church in Perth for a time.

Cunningham and his wife Nellie moved to Canberra in the late 1940s, following service with the RAAF in World War II. The family lived first in Turner, then in Forrest. Cunningham became conductor of the Choir of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Canberra and in 1948 became conductor of the Canberra Combined Church Choir.

The Canberra Combined Church Choir operated from 1941 to 1953. It formed to promote the love of sacred and secular musci through the public performance of oratorios, cantats, sacred anthems and other music, which will add stimulus to the spiritual and cultural education of the people, as a result of the loss of church choir members in the war years.

Cunningham died in March 1970 and is buried in the ex-service section of Woden Cemetery.

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